I just saw Meryl Streep accept the Golden Globe Award for best Actress in a Comedy Feature Film. She said she is very clear that she is just the vessel for other’s stories and other women’s lives.  But don’t we all know that she has opened herself to be a channel to allow full expression [...]

 
I enjoy watching Chris Wallace’s show Sunday mornings. He usually stirs up debate on political issues by asking leading questions to guests and panelists from both political major parties.
 I usually watch with partial attention while getting dressed for my Sunday meditation group. Once in a while someone on his show speaks with unusual clarity and [...]

 
The secret to healing stage fright is to focus attention into your fear, into the sensations of tension inside your body.  Once you do that, you will find that the experience is not as bad as you expected.  Inside yourself, you can relax into the tension and discover a new, safe ground within your own [...]

 
Shame and perfectionism are interrelated.  Shame is the painful feeling that comes from a deep-seated belief that “I am not good enough.”  It is generated from an unconscious thought that “I AM wrong.”  That means your very Being is not acceptable.
 Perfectionism is what we do to try to avoid the feelings of shame.  We think [...]

Once in a while, an idea comes along which changes all the other ideas that I am teaching. I met that idea this week at The UP Experience in Houston.  Among the cadre of sixteen awesome speakers, who were all thought leaders in their fields, was Dr. Brené Brown.  Dr. Brené Brown is a writer, researcher, [...]

 
 
I was waiting in the lobby of my massage therapist’s office this week.  Happy to be there to have a massage with my extraordinary orthopedic massage therapist Deborah Cimo, I was feeling good and anticipating feeling even better after Deborah did her magic on my neck and back.
 
The door from her private office into the [...]

 
Sean  Buvala  at storyteller.net has written an awesome post on using stories for apologies and healing.  He says that “Storytelling can be used for many different applications. One of the most difficult, but needed, application of storytelling is to express reconciliation, repentance and recompense.”
Sean lists five steps that help create a story of redemption:
1. Always tell [...]

 
The trick to awesome speaking is not looking good on the outside, but feeling good on the inside.  You must build an inner foundation of comfort in your skin, presence, internal fullness and receptivity to the flow of other’s attention.
 
What trips people up about speaking is often the internal tension that distracts them from what [...]

 I teach people to think on their feet and speak from their hearts.  My greatest challenge as a presentation teacher is to persuade people to accept their natural ability to speak and to let it flow without expecting themselves to be perfect in their speech. Verbal communication does not require the same sentence structure that [...]

 
I would love to have been a fly on the wall to have heard what President Clinton said to the North Korean officials that persuaded them to release the two women reporters.  My guess is that he used his ability to connect genuinely and speak from his heart.  I am sure he had a well [...]